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APPLICATION (city of darkness)
Mar. 30th, 2014 07:52 amMun
handle. Sam
age. 24
contact info.![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
zombifiers | whole mad season @ AIM | wholemadseason@gmail.com
link to reservation. o/
Character
The Basics
canon. Final Fantasy XIII series
character name. Snow Villiers
gender. Male
age. 523 (appears 23... kinda. explanation below)
appearances. The absolute first thing that people are going to notice about Snow is that he is a big guy. Even that in itself might be an understatement. During his conception, the game devs referred to him as "Mr. 33cm" -- referring to his foot size, since they hadn't yet given him a name. He's 6'7" and probably hovering close to 250lbs of muscle, so it's really no surprise that he's the best tank in the series. In the first game, he wasn't really all that threatening in appearance, despite dressing like a rebel scrublord. He had a disarming smile and a goofy way about him and made people comfortable. By the time of Lightning Returns, though, all of the smiles have been burned out of him. Though he still would never hurt a fly (unless he absolutely had to), just looks-wise alone, you probably wouldn't want to encounter this pissed-off-looking gorilla in a dark alley.
Being blonde-haired and blue-eyed in a Final Fantasy game, Snowhas the most punchable face in existence is a pretty, pretty man. This goes double for his current canon point. In the first two games, Snow kind of resembled a shaggy dog with his "rebel" appearance, overgrown scruff, and long hair (and that weird gross mullet thing he had going on in FFXIII-2), but by the time of Lightning Returns, he seems to have learned the value of a razor and a well-fitted suit. He wears it well and with confidence, like he's Mr. Big Dick on campus.
When all time stopped, Snow was 23 years old. Though he hasn't aged at all in 500 years and should rightfully still look 23, he in actuality does look much older in Lightning Returns than he did in FFXIII. (A friend of mine who is unfamiliar with the series said that he looked 40 in LR, but I wouldn't say it's quite that bad.) His face is thinner. He looks drawn and exhausted. There are lines around his eyes that weren't there before, and there are stress lines around his mouth when he frowns. It isn't time that's aging him. For 500 years, Snow has been absorbing Chaos into his own body in order to prevent it from spreading and destroying shit and killing people. (There's also probably something to be said about extreme stress and a self-destructive lifestyle that more likely than not involved the abuse of alcohol & drugs even though the game never comes out and explicitly says that that's the case.)
Snow's l'Cie brand is on his left forearm.
history. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Snow_Villiers
pull point. pre-Lightning Returns
The Psychology
Personality. Snow has come a long, long way since his initial appearance in the series. Once upon a time, in an app like this, you would've been reading about an obnoxious loud-mouthed blowhard who thinks he's the hero in an action movie and also everyone's best friend -- a man who's impulsive and hotheaded, quick to take charge and slow to notice if he's stepped on any toes.
Back in the day, Snow was considered the optimist of the group... even if sometimes it was less "optimism" and more "outright denial of how bad shit is and how much he's fucked up" but hey who's keeping track. In that regard, though, he's always been kind of self-aware. He's annoying and a show-off, but he's not delusional, and he's not stupid. He knows what he's doing and what he's done, but he bottles it all up and never lets it show. He has his moments of doubt, though, and there are brief moments littered all throughout the first two games where you can really see the cracks and the seams where he's just barely keeping it together. But it's not like him to sulk, bring everyone down, and give into grief. He has to keep moving forward, because for him, there's no way back.
He believed in everybody, so everybody believed in him -- Lightning's words, not mine. And that was always the thing about Snow. He had to keep believing that things would right themselves. He had to keep fighting and keep surviving, because he only ever lived his life for the sake of others. Snow is a man who takes his promises seriously and is motivated by his love for the people closest to him. The more he loves you, the further he pushes himself to help you. He toppled an entire government and overturned people's whole way of life just to get back to the woman he intends to spend the rest of his life with. It's a bit of recklessness that comes from a good place, but it inevitably has really bad results. He has a bit of a tendency to leave a shitload of collateral damage in his wake everywhere he goes, even though the last thing he wants is for anyone to get hurt. He's selfless and has a mean protective streak, but goddamn if he doesn't fuck everything up sometimes.
At least, that was how he used to be. Everyone has a breaking point, and the brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.
Snow's exact mental state isn't ever explicitly spelled out in LR (mostly because there will never be an M-rated Final Fantasy), but there sure are a lot of really heavy implications about what's going on if you look for them. I think it's really telling that Snow ended up running a place like Yusnaan and not any other area in the game. Yusnaan is kind of like if Vegas and NYC had a fucked up sin baby. People go to Yusnaan to forget through vice. Food, booze, sex, drugs -- whatever you need, Yusnaan's got it. And Snow's the ringleader of this circus. (My buddy Krist referred to him as "The Vanguard of Hedonistic Escape and Denial" and I think it's a much more fitting title than "Lord of the Feasthall" even if it's not quite as snappy.) Hell, when we're first introduced to him in LR, he's literally sitting on a throne and watching strippers dance on poles while other scantily-dressed girls pass out booze -- in his own fucking palace. The only way that they could have been more blatant about what he's been up to for the past few hundred years would be if they actually had a scene of him balls-deep in a stripper. While maybe it would've been nicer to think of him as trying to honor Serah's memory and right the missteps of his past, that's not what's going on here. He fucks those girls. He's given up on life and even given up on most of his duties as Patron and only looks for means of escapism.
Underneath it, though, Snow is still a good person. It's kind of funny how someone who used to be so anti-responsibility and anti-authority ends up in the highest seat of political power in one of the largest city-states left in the world, but he just wants to help. He's even comfortable with people calling him "Sire" and "My Lord" and "Lord Snow" because hey, if it makes them happy, then that's good enough for him. He wants people to be safe and have good lives, and if there's one thing that Snow Villiers is good at, it's giving. He gives everything he has to Yusnaan (dick jokes aside) and never once expects anything in return -- except maybe an occasional "thank you." He was named Patron of the city because he was the only one that people trusted to run things fairly and to not take over as a tyrant. Several NPCs mention that he's the only thing keeping Yusnaan and the surrounding areas from collapsing into civil war and famine. He even keeps the dark forces of Chaos away from the general populace by storing it in his own body, even though it is literally killing him in a slow, painful way.
Of course, he doesn't see it that way. He's too entrenched in his own grief and guilt to see the bigger picture of all of the good he's doing, and he thinks of himself as a powerless failure. Honestly, I can't really blame him. The poor guy has been through a lot. Between the first and second games, Snow sets out in search of Lightning to reunite her with Serah. He never finds her. He tries to save Fang and Vanille from dying in the collapse of Cocoon, but he never makes it to them. He sees Serah's inevitable death in a time anomaly, and he begs to be branded a l'Cie so that he can save her -- and he's given that as a Focus -- and she still dies. He wasn't even there with her when it happened. He watched the world crumble and slowly decay into chaos and shit and sin, getting worse and worse every day, but there was nothing he could do to fix it. And just when things couldn't get any worse, the last real friend he has left, Hope, disappears out of nowhere. He couldn't even fucking protect Hope. Snow feels personally responsible for all of these things, even though none of them are his fault. That's just the kind of person he is. He just wants everything to be okay and for the people he loves to be safe and happy, and when the opposite of that happens and he's the last one standing, he blames himself for it.
What we're left with is a broken, lonely man whose pain is only amplified by the amount of Chaos infecting his body. During the events of LR, he knowingly and willingly allows himself to become a Cie'th as an attempt at suicide. It's impossible to know just how long he'd wanted to "find a nice place to die," but it's probably been at the back of his mind for more than a few years. He even built a cage for himself in preparation for the day he inevitably went Cie'th. He knew how his life was going to end. He just wasn't sure when.
This isn't to say that Snow is beyond help or too far gone to get better. That's not true at all. He just needs someone to tell him that he's important to them; that he's loved; that he matters; that it's going to be okay. Snow has been alone for nearly 200 years since Hope's disappearance. Something like that is enough to make anyone lose perspective. But the core things that make Snow, Snow, are still there hiding somewhere inside that shell. He just needs to find them again.
Personality under duress. External stress is something that Snow has always been able to handle well and continues to handle well. He's tough as an ox and stubborn as a mule, and his head is so hard that it could probably crack a diamond. The truth is, he probably could've lasted another 500 or however many years he had to if that was what was needed of him. No matter the occasion, he is always able to rise and meet it. He never cowers or backs down from a fight. "Go through the front with guns blazing" is always his default plan, even when it seems like that would probably be the absolute worst way to go. But hey, it's just not as fun if you try to sneak in through the back.
Desires & Fears. I'm going to break this up into two separate sections just for the sake of organization.
Desires. Snow has an innate need to protect those around him, and he's driven far more by the needs of others than he is anything else. For him, everyone else comes first. It doesn't matter what he wants -- though there are things that he does want. Snow's main desire is for family. Even in LR, when he's completely broken and openly embraces the darkest parts of him, he's still insistent on calling Lightning "Sis." It's not meant to be a taunt, it's not meant to mock neither her nor himself. Snow looks at Lightning as his final hope -- to fulfill his final wish -- because she's his family. Or, at least, he wants her to be. He wants to believe that Lightning at least gives enough of a shit about him to kill him and make the pain go away. All he ever wanted was to have a happy, normal life with Serah and start a family with her -- something he was simply never allowed in life.
Fears. Failure. Loss. Loneliness. Irrelevance. All of the things that he's embraced by the time of LR as being the only remnants of his worthless existence. Snow is cruel to himself. He's so caught up on everything that he lost and everything that went wrong that he can't see how much good he's still doing and how many people still depend on him. It's really kind of sad to think about. In the first game, everyone was so afraid of becoming Cie'th. It was like watching a zombie movie where all of the protags had been bitten and they were racing against time to find a cure. By the time of LR, Snow has become so consumed by his other, bigger fears that even becoming a zombie seems like a more welcome option. He failed his Focus and let Serah die. Couldn't save the world. Couldn't save his friends. Couldn't even protect Hope. What else does he have to be afraid of anymore, if not himself?
Developing the darkness. Well, I kind of feel like this question is harder to answer as someone who is familiar with both Silent Hill and Eternal Darkness. I know how extremely volatile and unreliable the fabric of reality is both of those games and how badly it can really fuck with a person's psyche, so I feel like Snow's development is going to depend on a lot on what kind of events happen throughout the course of the game. He's already in a fucked up place to begin with. It would be really easy to play up his sexuality and how he uses sex as an escape, but it would also be just as easy to take a more destructive path. Snow has a lot of guilt and anger built up inside of him, and all of that Chaos sure isn't helping. Though Snow is still an inherently good person, it might be interesting to see what would happen if he was pushed into projecting those feelings outwards, perhaps in a violent way. (After all, he picks a fight with Lightning, of all people. It's not a far-fetched idea.) It would probably spiral into some hot bullshit that would only make him feel worse, and that's what makes it fun.
Skills & Abilities
Basic Skills. Snow fights with his fists, which is a dangerous thing for a man his size. Getting hit with a 6'7 250lb haymaker to the face is probably enough for most people to go down and stay down. Even then, Snow is far better at taking hits than he is at throwing them. Serah refers to him as being "tough as a behemoth," and he has the highest HP and defense stats in the series.
Apart from fighting, it's implied in the first game that Snow has some mechanical experience building and modding cars, bikes, and other vehicles. He has a basic grasp on how to handle conventional weapons, including hand grenades and automatic rifles. He's also a natural born leader and is quick to take charge -- even when he doesn't necessarily have a plan.
Supernatural & Superhuman. Rather unsurprisingly, Snow's powers as a l'Cie give him mastery over water, ice, and snow (harr) magic. His abilities vary in potency and strength depending on whatever the canon needs him to do at the time, because Final Fantasy. At one point in the first game, he freezes basically an entire arena in a matter of seconds. Snow also has the ability to summon the Shiva sisters to aid him, though this isn't something he ever does after the first game, so I doubt he'd ever be inclined to do it in the setting of the RP either. (There's also the whole thing with the Chaos absorption, too, but I doubt that will ever be relevant here?? Also I'm not even entirely sure how it works, to be quite honest. It's just a thing that happens in the game that you're expected to just go with.)
Skill & Ability growth. To be quite honest, I kind of feel like Snow is a little OP to begin with and would like to see him stripped of his abilities before I would ever want to give him more. If anything, though, I would want him to build up a better familiarity with conventional weapons, because while punching monsters in the face worked at home, I really don't think it's a good idea here. L'Cie powers be damned.
Weaknesses
It would be so easy to say that his biggest weaknesses are the people that he loves, but I think it would be a bit disingenuous. The #1 thing that gets in Snow's way is himself. It has less to do with other people and more to do with what he does to himself because of them. He's stubborn and pig-headed to a fault, and he's capable of some really bad tunnel vision at times. Pile this on top of his tendency to feel personally responsible for every single thing that goes wrong and his habit of bottling things up in a really unhealthy way, and it's not really all that surprising that he ended up the way he did in LR.
Snow's guilt is what broke him in the end. His terrible need to be needed backfired on him, and when he finally found himself completely alone, he crumbled. He blamed himself for everything, including the destruction of the whole goddamn world. If there was ever someone who could find a way to take his guilt and use it against him, he wouldn't be able to stand a chance.
As for physical weaknesses, being an ice-based elementalist, Snow is weak to fire... but I kind of feel like that's redundant to say, because I'm pretty sure most human beings in general are weak to fire.
Samples
prose sample for prompt [Lust] [NSFW]
She wasn't Serah. She was just a dancer at the palace.
The thought burned in the darkest corners of Snow's mind, flickering and scorching like a match flame that refused to go out. No matter how desperately he tried to smother it – to forget about it entirely – it never went away. For all of his efforts, it was all he could do to pretend it wasn’t there.
She wasn't Serah, but she sure looked like Serah, especially from behind. Snow cracked his eyes open and spared a glance down at her. She had the same slender build that Serah did. She had the same wavy, rose-colored hair that sprawled out across her back like Serah's used to in the same position. She had same slightly-tanned skin. The same curve to her back. She even kind of sounded like her with every breathy moan as Snow fucked her.
But she wasn't Serah. Serah wouldn't have danced topless for half of Yusnaan. When Snow really looked at her, he noticed all of the things that were wrong. Her voice was similar, but not close enough. Her muscles were too toned and visible. Her shoulders weren't bony enough. The way she had her hair styled wasn't quite right. Her hands weren't balled into fists and gripping at the sheets – Serah's always were. All of those tiny imperfections were always in his periphery, even when he actively tried to ignore them. She just wasn't Serah, and his heart refused to let his body be fooled.
Snow closed his eyes again, trying to shut out all of his doubts with them. He ran his open palm up along the curvature of her spine. His other hand fell to the side of her thigh and slowly traveled up to her natural waist, where he grabbed a hold with a firm grip and used it as an anchor to quicken the pace of his hips. The pitch of her voice immediately dropped, and she sounded off on every exhale.
He rocked his hips against hers again and again as he fucked her at a feverish pace. The sound of skin hitting skin filled the room, accentuated by her low, breathless moans. Sweat rolled down the side of his face and trailed along his neck, and his mouth fell open as he gasped for air. He was being rough with her and he knew it, but she never objected, and if he was hurting her, she never said anything. He opened his eyes to see if she was giving him any sort of non-verbal clues, but what he found when he looked at her was that she had her back arched and her head thrown back. Snow was mesmerized by the sight of her. To him, there was nothing hotter than the sight of a woman enjoying herself so thoroughly, and right now he couldn’t get enough of her. Every bit about the way she was positioned turned him on, especially the way she looked so tiny beneath his hands. Serah had always looked like that to him – so small and delicate, even though he knew that she was actually tough as nails.
As he continued to watch the woman kneeling on the bed beside where he stood – as he listened to all of the sounds that escaped her throat, and as he watched her rock her hips back against his, just barely – in that moment, she was Serah. Snow could almost hear the sound of Serah's voice, moaning his name and begging him not to stop. He could squint and see her bedspread beneath her – the one that looked like a map of the night's sky. He could pretend, just for a moment, that he was back in her bedroom, in her house, fucking her desperately in an attempt to finish before Lightning came home and caught them in the act. (She never did, though she always suspected.)
He took the thought and grabbed onto it, holding it tight for just a few minutes more. It was all he needed.
It was barely enough to even be considered an orgasm, but at least he came this time. He could be grateful for that much, at least, even if it left him feeling empty and unsatisfied.
prose sample for prompt [Sorrow]
Another late night. Another early morning. Snow shook his head as he pulled at the buttons of his jacket. Maybe the palace guards were right to be worried about him. He was worried about himself. Too bad nobody among them was worried enough to actually do anything about it.
He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the foot of his bed, and then took a seat on the edge. It was getting worse. Every one of his joints ached and burned from the Chaos that ate away at his body, and even simple movements like walking and sitting inflamed them even more. Snow didn't have an exact measurement of how much Chaos he could take before the end came, but it couldn't be much longer now. Maybe another century or so -- longer if he spaced things out.
He grimaced at the thought. Funny how he didn't think of "century" as being a long time anymore.
Maybe he would get lucky. Maybe the world would end before he ever had to make the decision to roll over and die. They all knew that it was coming, but nobody knew when. After being alive for over 100 years, the idea of keeping time started to lose meaning. 500 years seemed like a cruel joke. Anything more than that would probably be torture.
Until then, he would just have to push through and take it. He could deal with the pain -- or at least well enough to not complain about it. He glanced down at the brand on his arm. It burned into his skin like it was still fresh, and dark Chaos leaked from it like the barrel of a smoking gun. It wasn't supposed to be like this. None of it was meant to turn out this way. He could remember when that brand actually meant something. It seemed like so long ago now, like it'd happened to someone else in a different life. It used to motivate him and drive him forward. It gave him a sense of urgency, and it made him think that every single action he made counted.
It used to hold everyone together. They were a family, once, united by the same terrible fate.
Now they were gone. All of them. And all Snow had left was a decaying body and a carefully laid out plan that led to his death.
He let his head drop. His chest felt heavy, and his shoulders sagged beneath the weight of his guilt. Some days he wondered why the hell he even bothered. Sure, he had obligations to Yusnaan, but every day he was saw less and less meaning in them. Yusnaan had been running smoothly for 500 years. If he disappeared now, they all knew well enough to take care of themselves. They didn't need him. Nobody needed him, and caring for Yusnaan wasn't going to magically right the wrongs of his past. It wasn't going to unkill Serah or bring anyone else back.
He curled his hand around the pendant at his neck. Serah. On days like this, he would go Cie'th in a heartbeat if it meant being with her. If only he could know for sure that it would.
handle. Sam
age. 24
contact info.
link to reservation. o/
Character
The Basics
canon. Final Fantasy XIII series
character name. Snow Villiers
gender. Male
age. 523 (appears 23... kinda. explanation below)
appearances. The absolute first thing that people are going to notice about Snow is that he is a big guy. Even that in itself might be an understatement. During his conception, the game devs referred to him as "Mr. 33cm" -- referring to his foot size, since they hadn't yet given him a name. He's 6'7" and probably hovering close to 250lbs of muscle, so it's really no surprise that he's the best tank in the series. In the first game, he wasn't really all that threatening in appearance, despite dressing like a rebel scrublord. He had a disarming smile and a goofy way about him and made people comfortable. By the time of Lightning Returns, though, all of the smiles have been burned out of him. Though he still would never hurt a fly (unless he absolutely had to), just looks-wise alone, you probably wouldn't want to encounter this pissed-off-looking gorilla in a dark alley.
Being blonde-haired and blue-eyed in a Final Fantasy game, Snow
When all time stopped, Snow was 23 years old. Though he hasn't aged at all in 500 years and should rightfully still look 23, he in actuality does look much older in Lightning Returns than he did in FFXIII. (A friend of mine who is unfamiliar with the series said that he looked 40 in LR, but I wouldn't say it's quite that bad.) His face is thinner. He looks drawn and exhausted. There are lines around his eyes that weren't there before, and there are stress lines around his mouth when he frowns. It isn't time that's aging him. For 500 years, Snow has been absorbing Chaos into his own body in order to prevent it from spreading and destroying shit and killing people. (There's also probably something to be said about extreme stress and a self-destructive lifestyle that more likely than not involved the abuse of alcohol & drugs even though the game never comes out and explicitly says that that's the case.)
Snow's l'Cie brand is on his left forearm.
history. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Snow_Villiers
pull point. pre-Lightning Returns
The Psychology
Personality. Snow has come a long, long way since his initial appearance in the series. Once upon a time, in an app like this, you would've been reading about an obnoxious loud-mouthed blowhard who thinks he's the hero in an action movie and also everyone's best friend -- a man who's impulsive and hotheaded, quick to take charge and slow to notice if he's stepped on any toes.
Back in the day, Snow was considered the optimist of the group... even if sometimes it was less "optimism" and more "outright denial of how bad shit is and how much he's fucked up" but hey who's keeping track. In that regard, though, he's always been kind of self-aware. He's annoying and a show-off, but he's not delusional, and he's not stupid. He knows what he's doing and what he's done, but he bottles it all up and never lets it show. He has his moments of doubt, though, and there are brief moments littered all throughout the first two games where you can really see the cracks and the seams where he's just barely keeping it together. But it's not like him to sulk, bring everyone down, and give into grief. He has to keep moving forward, because for him, there's no way back.
He believed in everybody, so everybody believed in him -- Lightning's words, not mine. And that was always the thing about Snow. He had to keep believing that things would right themselves. He had to keep fighting and keep surviving, because he only ever lived his life for the sake of others. Snow is a man who takes his promises seriously and is motivated by his love for the people closest to him. The more he loves you, the further he pushes himself to help you. He toppled an entire government and overturned people's whole way of life just to get back to the woman he intends to spend the rest of his life with. It's a bit of recklessness that comes from a good place, but it inevitably has really bad results. He has a bit of a tendency to leave a shitload of collateral damage in his wake everywhere he goes, even though the last thing he wants is for anyone to get hurt. He's selfless and has a mean protective streak, but goddamn if he doesn't fuck everything up sometimes.
At least, that was how he used to be. Everyone has a breaking point, and the brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.
Snow's exact mental state isn't ever explicitly spelled out in LR (mostly because there will never be an M-rated Final Fantasy), but there sure are a lot of really heavy implications about what's going on if you look for them. I think it's really telling that Snow ended up running a place like Yusnaan and not any other area in the game. Yusnaan is kind of like if Vegas and NYC had a fucked up sin baby. People go to Yusnaan to forget through vice. Food, booze, sex, drugs -- whatever you need, Yusnaan's got it. And Snow's the ringleader of this circus. (My buddy Krist referred to him as "The Vanguard of Hedonistic Escape and Denial" and I think it's a much more fitting title than "Lord of the Feasthall" even if it's not quite as snappy.) Hell, when we're first introduced to him in LR, he's literally sitting on a throne and watching strippers dance on poles while other scantily-dressed girls pass out booze -- in his own fucking palace. The only way that they could have been more blatant about what he's been up to for the past few hundred years would be if they actually had a scene of him balls-deep in a stripper. While maybe it would've been nicer to think of him as trying to honor Serah's memory and right the missteps of his past, that's not what's going on here. He fucks those girls. He's given up on life and even given up on most of his duties as Patron and only looks for means of escapism.
Underneath it, though, Snow is still a good person. It's kind of funny how someone who used to be so anti-responsibility and anti-authority ends up in the highest seat of political power in one of the largest city-states left in the world, but he just wants to help. He's even comfortable with people calling him "Sire" and "My Lord" and "Lord Snow" because hey, if it makes them happy, then that's good enough for him. He wants people to be safe and have good lives, and if there's one thing that Snow Villiers is good at, it's giving. He gives everything he has to Yusnaan (dick jokes aside) and never once expects anything in return -- except maybe an occasional "thank you." He was named Patron of the city because he was the only one that people trusted to run things fairly and to not take over as a tyrant. Several NPCs mention that he's the only thing keeping Yusnaan and the surrounding areas from collapsing into civil war and famine. He even keeps the dark forces of Chaos away from the general populace by storing it in his own body, even though it is literally killing him in a slow, painful way.
Of course, he doesn't see it that way. He's too entrenched in his own grief and guilt to see the bigger picture of all of the good he's doing, and he thinks of himself as a powerless failure. Honestly, I can't really blame him. The poor guy has been through a lot. Between the first and second games, Snow sets out in search of Lightning to reunite her with Serah. He never finds her. He tries to save Fang and Vanille from dying in the collapse of Cocoon, but he never makes it to them. He sees Serah's inevitable death in a time anomaly, and he begs to be branded a l'Cie so that he can save her -- and he's given that as a Focus -- and she still dies. He wasn't even there with her when it happened. He watched the world crumble and slowly decay into chaos and shit and sin, getting worse and worse every day, but there was nothing he could do to fix it. And just when things couldn't get any worse, the last real friend he has left, Hope, disappears out of nowhere. He couldn't even fucking protect Hope. Snow feels personally responsible for all of these things, even though none of them are his fault. That's just the kind of person he is. He just wants everything to be okay and for the people he loves to be safe and happy, and when the opposite of that happens and he's the last one standing, he blames himself for it.
What we're left with is a broken, lonely man whose pain is only amplified by the amount of Chaos infecting his body. During the events of LR, he knowingly and willingly allows himself to become a Cie'th as an attempt at suicide. It's impossible to know just how long he'd wanted to "find a nice place to die," but it's probably been at the back of his mind for more than a few years. He even built a cage for himself in preparation for the day he inevitably went Cie'th. He knew how his life was going to end. He just wasn't sure when.
This isn't to say that Snow is beyond help or too far gone to get better. That's not true at all. He just needs someone to tell him that he's important to them; that he's loved; that he matters; that it's going to be okay. Snow has been alone for nearly 200 years since Hope's disappearance. Something like that is enough to make anyone lose perspective. But the core things that make Snow, Snow, are still there hiding somewhere inside that shell. He just needs to find them again.
Personality under duress. External stress is something that Snow has always been able to handle well and continues to handle well. He's tough as an ox and stubborn as a mule, and his head is so hard that it could probably crack a diamond. The truth is, he probably could've lasted another 500 or however many years he had to if that was what was needed of him. No matter the occasion, he is always able to rise and meet it. He never cowers or backs down from a fight. "Go through the front with guns blazing" is always his default plan, even when it seems like that would probably be the absolute worst way to go. But hey, it's just not as fun if you try to sneak in through the back.
Desires & Fears. I'm going to break this up into two separate sections just for the sake of organization.
Desires. Snow has an innate need to protect those around him, and he's driven far more by the needs of others than he is anything else. For him, everyone else comes first. It doesn't matter what he wants -- though there are things that he does want. Snow's main desire is for family. Even in LR, when he's completely broken and openly embraces the darkest parts of him, he's still insistent on calling Lightning "Sis." It's not meant to be a taunt, it's not meant to mock neither her nor himself. Snow looks at Lightning as his final hope -- to fulfill his final wish -- because she's his family. Or, at least, he wants her to be. He wants to believe that Lightning at least gives enough of a shit about him to kill him and make the pain go away. All he ever wanted was to have a happy, normal life with Serah and start a family with her -- something he was simply never allowed in life.
Fears. Failure. Loss. Loneliness. Irrelevance. All of the things that he's embraced by the time of LR as being the only remnants of his worthless existence. Snow is cruel to himself. He's so caught up on everything that he lost and everything that went wrong that he can't see how much good he's still doing and how many people still depend on him. It's really kind of sad to think about. In the first game, everyone was so afraid of becoming Cie'th. It was like watching a zombie movie where all of the protags had been bitten and they were racing against time to find a cure. By the time of LR, Snow has become so consumed by his other, bigger fears that even becoming a zombie seems like a more welcome option. He failed his Focus and let Serah die. Couldn't save the world. Couldn't save his friends. Couldn't even protect Hope. What else does he have to be afraid of anymore, if not himself?
Developing the darkness. Well, I kind of feel like this question is harder to answer as someone who is familiar with both Silent Hill and Eternal Darkness. I know how extremely volatile and unreliable the fabric of reality is both of those games and how badly it can really fuck with a person's psyche, so I feel like Snow's development is going to depend on a lot on what kind of events happen throughout the course of the game. He's already in a fucked up place to begin with. It would be really easy to play up his sexuality and how he uses sex as an escape, but it would also be just as easy to take a more destructive path. Snow has a lot of guilt and anger built up inside of him, and all of that Chaos sure isn't helping. Though Snow is still an inherently good person, it might be interesting to see what would happen if he was pushed into projecting those feelings outwards, perhaps in a violent way. (After all, he picks a fight with Lightning, of all people. It's not a far-fetched idea.) It would probably spiral into some hot bullshit that would only make him feel worse, and that's what makes it fun.
Skills & Abilities
Basic Skills. Snow fights with his fists, which is a dangerous thing for a man his size. Getting hit with a 6'7 250lb haymaker to the face is probably enough for most people to go down and stay down. Even then, Snow is far better at taking hits than he is at throwing them. Serah refers to him as being "tough as a behemoth," and he has the highest HP and defense stats in the series.
Apart from fighting, it's implied in the first game that Snow has some mechanical experience building and modding cars, bikes, and other vehicles. He has a basic grasp on how to handle conventional weapons, including hand grenades and automatic rifles. He's also a natural born leader and is quick to take charge -- even when he doesn't necessarily have a plan.
Supernatural & Superhuman. Rather unsurprisingly, Snow's powers as a l'Cie give him mastery over water, ice, and snow (harr) magic. His abilities vary in potency and strength depending on whatever the canon needs him to do at the time, because Final Fantasy. At one point in the first game, he freezes basically an entire arena in a matter of seconds. Snow also has the ability to summon the Shiva sisters to aid him, though this isn't something he ever does after the first game, so I doubt he'd ever be inclined to do it in the setting of the RP either. (There's also the whole thing with the Chaos absorption, too, but I doubt that will ever be relevant here?? Also I'm not even entirely sure how it works, to be quite honest. It's just a thing that happens in the game that you're expected to just go with.)
Skill & Ability growth. To be quite honest, I kind of feel like Snow is a little OP to begin with and would like to see him stripped of his abilities before I would ever want to give him more. If anything, though, I would want him to build up a better familiarity with conventional weapons, because while punching monsters in the face worked at home, I really don't think it's a good idea here. L'Cie powers be damned.
Weaknesses
It would be so easy to say that his biggest weaknesses are the people that he loves, but I think it would be a bit disingenuous. The #1 thing that gets in Snow's way is himself. It has less to do with other people and more to do with what he does to himself because of them. He's stubborn and pig-headed to a fault, and he's capable of some really bad tunnel vision at times. Pile this on top of his tendency to feel personally responsible for every single thing that goes wrong and his habit of bottling things up in a really unhealthy way, and it's not really all that surprising that he ended up the way he did in LR.
Snow's guilt is what broke him in the end. His terrible need to be needed backfired on him, and when he finally found himself completely alone, he crumbled. He blamed himself for everything, including the destruction of the whole goddamn world. If there was ever someone who could find a way to take his guilt and use it against him, he wouldn't be able to stand a chance.
As for physical weaknesses, being an ice-based elementalist, Snow is weak to fire... but I kind of feel like that's redundant to say, because I'm pretty sure most human beings in general are weak to fire.
Samples
prose sample for prompt [Lust] [NSFW]
She wasn't Serah. She was just a dancer at the palace.
The thought burned in the darkest corners of Snow's mind, flickering and scorching like a match flame that refused to go out. No matter how desperately he tried to smother it – to forget about it entirely – it never went away. For all of his efforts, it was all he could do to pretend it wasn’t there.
She wasn't Serah, but she sure looked like Serah, especially from behind. Snow cracked his eyes open and spared a glance down at her. She had the same slender build that Serah did. She had the same wavy, rose-colored hair that sprawled out across her back like Serah's used to in the same position. She had same slightly-tanned skin. The same curve to her back. She even kind of sounded like her with every breathy moan as Snow fucked her.
But she wasn't Serah. Serah wouldn't have danced topless for half of Yusnaan. When Snow really looked at her, he noticed all of the things that were wrong. Her voice was similar, but not close enough. Her muscles were too toned and visible. Her shoulders weren't bony enough. The way she had her hair styled wasn't quite right. Her hands weren't balled into fists and gripping at the sheets – Serah's always were. All of those tiny imperfections were always in his periphery, even when he actively tried to ignore them. She just wasn't Serah, and his heart refused to let his body be fooled.
Snow closed his eyes again, trying to shut out all of his doubts with them. He ran his open palm up along the curvature of her spine. His other hand fell to the side of her thigh and slowly traveled up to her natural waist, where he grabbed a hold with a firm grip and used it as an anchor to quicken the pace of his hips. The pitch of her voice immediately dropped, and she sounded off on every exhale.
He rocked his hips against hers again and again as he fucked her at a feverish pace. The sound of skin hitting skin filled the room, accentuated by her low, breathless moans. Sweat rolled down the side of his face and trailed along his neck, and his mouth fell open as he gasped for air. He was being rough with her and he knew it, but she never objected, and if he was hurting her, she never said anything. He opened his eyes to see if she was giving him any sort of non-verbal clues, but what he found when he looked at her was that she had her back arched and her head thrown back. Snow was mesmerized by the sight of her. To him, there was nothing hotter than the sight of a woman enjoying herself so thoroughly, and right now he couldn’t get enough of her. Every bit about the way she was positioned turned him on, especially the way she looked so tiny beneath his hands. Serah had always looked like that to him – so small and delicate, even though he knew that she was actually tough as nails.
As he continued to watch the woman kneeling on the bed beside where he stood – as he listened to all of the sounds that escaped her throat, and as he watched her rock her hips back against his, just barely – in that moment, she was Serah. Snow could almost hear the sound of Serah's voice, moaning his name and begging him not to stop. He could squint and see her bedspread beneath her – the one that looked like a map of the night's sky. He could pretend, just for a moment, that he was back in her bedroom, in her house, fucking her desperately in an attempt to finish before Lightning came home and caught them in the act. (She never did, though she always suspected.)
He took the thought and grabbed onto it, holding it tight for just a few minutes more. It was all he needed.
It was barely enough to even be considered an orgasm, but at least he came this time. He could be grateful for that much, at least, even if it left him feeling empty and unsatisfied.
prose sample for prompt [Sorrow]
Another late night. Another early morning. Snow shook his head as he pulled at the buttons of his jacket. Maybe the palace guards were right to be worried about him. He was worried about himself. Too bad nobody among them was worried enough to actually do anything about it.
He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the foot of his bed, and then took a seat on the edge. It was getting worse. Every one of his joints ached and burned from the Chaos that ate away at his body, and even simple movements like walking and sitting inflamed them even more. Snow didn't have an exact measurement of how much Chaos he could take before the end came, but it couldn't be much longer now. Maybe another century or so -- longer if he spaced things out.
He grimaced at the thought. Funny how he didn't think of "century" as being a long time anymore.
Maybe he would get lucky. Maybe the world would end before he ever had to make the decision to roll over and die. They all knew that it was coming, but nobody knew when. After being alive for over 100 years, the idea of keeping time started to lose meaning. 500 years seemed like a cruel joke. Anything more than that would probably be torture.
Until then, he would just have to push through and take it. He could deal with the pain -- or at least well enough to not complain about it. He glanced down at the brand on his arm. It burned into his skin like it was still fresh, and dark Chaos leaked from it like the barrel of a smoking gun. It wasn't supposed to be like this. None of it was meant to turn out this way. He could remember when that brand actually meant something. It seemed like so long ago now, like it'd happened to someone else in a different life. It used to motivate him and drive him forward. It gave him a sense of urgency, and it made him think that every single action he made counted.
It used to hold everyone together. They were a family, once, united by the same terrible fate.
Now they were gone. All of them. And all Snow had left was a decaying body and a carefully laid out plan that led to his death.
He let his head drop. His chest felt heavy, and his shoulders sagged beneath the weight of his guilt. Some days he wondered why the hell he even bothered. Sure, he had obligations to Yusnaan, but every day he was saw less and less meaning in them. Yusnaan had been running smoothly for 500 years. If he disappeared now, they all knew well enough to take care of themselves. They didn't need him. Nobody needed him, and caring for Yusnaan wasn't going to magically right the wrongs of his past. It wasn't going to unkill Serah or bring anyone else back.
He curled his hand around the pendant at his neck. Serah. On days like this, he would go Cie'th in a heartbeat if it meant being with her. If only he could know for sure that it would.
